“But you’ve stayed around.”
“Because there’s still a fortune we haven’t gotten to yet, McCrackenballs. Strange things were happening in these parts well before the Dragon Fish was even conceived. Someday I’ll find a way to bring up the rest of those crystals.”
“You mean they’re still down there?”
“Besides some modest reserves that were relatively easy to salvage.”
“Which you offered to the highest bidder.”
Vasquez nodded. “A shame I didn’t have more, though. One party paid an astounding price for my meager stores. Big Russian with a patch for a left eye.”
“Katlov!” Natalya said loud enough to draw the armed guards’ attention to her. Her eyes locked with McCracken’s.
“Then,” Blaine realized, “Raskowski was after the Atragon here as well. Unlike him to give up so easily.”
“He didn’t give up,” Natalya said. “He found what he needed in Pamosa Springs. The Biminis became superfluous. If anything he’d want the reserves here buried forever, so we wouldn’t be able to get to them either.”
“Stop the games!” Vasquez barked. “All the stories in the world won’t save you this time, McCrackenballs.”
“No story this time, fat man. I was after those crystals to power an energy shield, against a death ray controlled by a Russian madman. Once he wipes out America the rest of civilization will fall like dominoes. Think about it.”
“You’re lying!” Vasquez insisted, but his voice sounded tentative. “Holding to tricks, deceptions, till the very last.”
“The deception’s not mine this time, fat man. It belongs to a mad Russian general named Raskowski to whom you so kindly delivered your reserves of Atragon.” McCracken stopped to put things together for himself. When he spoke again, it was mostly to Natalya. “That shipment must have powered the satellite he lost. When the need for more came up, he turned to Pamosa Springs. He could launch his reflector on board the replacement for Ulysses and save himself the bother of moving the crystals by constructing the generator gun right in the town. But one thing doesn’t fit. The second communiqué he sent, the one containing the three-week ultimatum, was sent after he lost his first satellite and way before the work in Pamosa Springs was finished. I don’t get it.”
“Another deception,” suggested Natalya. “He wanted to make your government believe they had more time than they actually did, so the element of surprise would return to his side. There won’t be any more ultimatums or messages. He’s going to begin firing just as soon as his reflector achieves orbit.”
“Twenty-four hours from now,” McCracken said. “Maybe less.”
“Stop!” ordered Vasquez. “Very well rehearsed, I grant you, but—”
“Give it up, fat man. The story’s true and you know it. Think about the fact that we weren’t the only party to end up in your private waters. Or have you forgotten those Russians you devoured a few minutes ago?”
“Russians?”
Blaine nodded. “Raskowski’s men, as I see it. He’s not just after us anymore, either. He wants you and your Atragon out of the way, too, and it’s my guess we’ll have proof of that before long. If I penetrated your guise as Salim, it’s a sure bet he did as well. Once I arrived on the scene you became too much of a liability. He’s probably had you under watch since the very beginning.”
Vasquez’s huge jowls puckered in grim determination. “Fitting, since I have kept tabs on his one-eyed bandit all this time too.”
Katlov! Natalya and McCracken thought together.
“Then you have tabs on Raskowski!” she blurted.
“Only if they’re together. The information’s a phone call away, that’s all. But that assumes I—”
The sonar operator broke in, turning toward Vasquez as he spoke. “Sir, I have three aircraft coming up on our position. Range, 5,000 meters and closing.”
“Prepare to dive,” ordered Vasquez, and a bell chimed three times within the huge belly of the Dragon Fish. He waited a few seconds longer, giving the armed guards ample opportunity to solidify their positions around their captives at what promised to be a most vulnerable moment. “Dive.”
The Dragon Fish dropped gracefully beneath the sea, lights growing immediately dimmer and hazing over with red.
“Aircraft 4,000 meters and closing,” reported the sonar operator as three additional blips appeared on his screen. He gazed back at the fat man once again. “I also show three large ships steaming this way. Range four miles. Speed increasing. Trying for a signal fix now….”
“Join us, fat man,” Blaine urged. “There are some things important enough to bring even you and me together.”
“Planes closing,” sonar reported. “Range now 2,000 meters. Range of boats three-and-one-half miles.” He checked his screen, punched in a few commands onto his computer console, and read the results out loud when they flashed across his screen. “Sir, I have a signature now on those approaching ships. They’re trawlers, big ones.” He swallowed hard. “Soviet H-class complete with several high-powered deck guns and missile launchers. Warships in disguise.”
Vasquez looked at McCracken, then at nothing in particular. “Maybe they know I’m here, McCracken, but they couldn’t possibly know about the Dragon Fish.” Then, to the uniformed figure standing by the periscope, “Commander, set an intercept course for us with those trawlers and prepare the surface-to-air missiles. Our baby is hungry again.”
Chapter 30
“Would a baked you a cake with a file in it,” Clara Buhl had told Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk six hours earlier at five P.M. “But I forgot the recipe.”
“How’s things in town?” the mayor asked her.
“Real quiet since you boys became jailbirds. Our mysterious killer seems to be taking a break.”
“You and Isaac T. been around to the people?”
“Yeah, and I can tell you …”
The conversation was held within earshot of three of Guillermo Paz’s soldiers. And it was all a front for Dog-ear to figure out a way to slip Clara the note he and Heep had composed on a tattered piece of newspaper they found under one of the mattresses. They had actually composed it two days before, but Clara had been the first visitor they were allowed.
They were under watch almost all the time and had stolen the minutes required to write the note, with Heep distracting the guards. Paz had jailed them in the right cell, the one nearest the street, where Heep had stowed two crates, one each of grenades and Laws rockets. He’d had plenty of experience with bazookas in Korea and these damn things couldn’t be much different. He’d seen how they worked on television. Problem was figuring out what to make them work on. Oh, they could do plenty of damage from here before Paz’s men caught on, but what would that accomplish? No, what they needed was to get the hell out of jail and get word to the outside world that they needed help. Neither man knew exactly how they were going to accomplish all that.
Dog-ear kept coughing into his hand as he spoke with Clara. He hoped the guards would be bored with the small talk and the gesture which was meant to disguise his passing over the note at the proper time. He was just about ready to figure that the proper time was never going to come when Clara, bless her, feigned a slip on the slick floor and had to use the bars to hoist her beefy frame back up. As she gripped them low at the start, before the soldiers had a chance to approach, Dog-ear slipped the note into her hand. She accepted it without expression, figuring all along the mayor would have plenty to say he wouldn’t want heard and attracted by his coughing into a bit of white crumpled in his fist.